17. Autumn Dawns

The saga ends. Happily, I hope.

STELLA‘S AUTUMN

17. Autumn Dawns

It really did seem that a new family had been born by lunch time when Tony slipped out to shop for fish and chips so that they could all eat together, and when he returned, the aroma of a really good fish and chip shop clung all over him, Peter looked contentedly at Donna.

“So, the sister I never really knew that I had,” he said with a smile, “now tell me what you made of our French holiday.”

She started with the least hint of a frown, and then she smiled.

“It was lovely,” she said, “maybe not all my cup of tea, but I can tell that my dad liked it. And that’s the first time I’ve had someone I can call my dad!”

Later that day, when Percival and Stella were on their own, and back at Stella’s home with hopes for a more united family group, she became somewhat philosophical.

“It’s like we’ve entered a new season,” she said quietly, “an autumn, maybe, to beat all autumns because, well, at my age it can hardly be called a spring!”

Percy smiled at her. “You’re no older than a spring chicken,” he told her, “because I remember you from a loing time ago, and you’re still the same lovely woman!”

“When I was a schoolgirl,” remembered Stella, “before I got to know you, Percy, there was s friend of mine who never seemed to grow like the rest of us, and she had snowy white hair. Even her eyebrows were white, which is why we called her Snowdrop. It was a long time ago, but I can still remember with shock the day we were told she had died in the night. It seemed she had a condition, I forget what it was called, that was associated with a short life. Thye’d probably be able to cure it now, but way back then they could’t and poor Snowdrop died.”

“So sad,” murmured Percy, “but I guess not one of us is guaranteed a long life when we’re born.”

“I think Snowdrop knew,” sighed Stella, “because she never made any plans for the future like most girls do. Not that I can remember, anyway. Her medical condiion must have lain on her life like a big black shadow or cloud, and when some girls were saying that the boy they’re suddenly keen on might be the one they’ll marry when they’re old enough, she never entered into that kind of conversation. I remember because, at the time, when some of us went to her funeral, it struck me how sad that was.”

“The artists at Lascaux lived lives that were probably mostly in the spring,” murmured Percy, “because I’ve researched life expectancy over the ages and back then they’d be lucky to make forty before some dire thing like a wild animal or disease saw them off.”

“So we’re lucky to be living now, because I’m old enough to be a dusty skeleton six feet down,” sighed Stella. “It’s good to have this autumn to live through. I don’t really fancy resting for eternity in a wooden box six deep in the ground.”

“More likely to be taken to the local crematorium,” pointed out Percival, “not that the thought of sizzling away in a furnace is any more acceptable than decomposing in a coffin.”

“Snowdrop was buried” remembered Stella, “a life time ago, or about seventy years ago. I wondered then, and I still find it crossing my mind in more morbid moments, if you looked at our class of girls in our pleated skirts and white blouses and uniform ties, and took the chairs away when one passed away, Snowdrop’s first, poor lass, then eventually others, how many are still there with me being in my eighties and some I know, and guess quite a few, gone already. There was Peggy Montrose, a nasty piece of work at school a typical bully who enjoyed picking on those less able to defend themselves, she wasn’t fifty when she died. And it might make me sound childish, but even though we were no longer schoolgirls, I mentally rejoiced when I heard of her death.”

“But you took her chair away in your mind,” sighed Percy, lost for something to say that wasn’t insensitive.

Stella smiled back. “I did. Well, mine is still by my desk with me sitting on it! Nobody’s going to take that away just yet. Now that I’ve decided it’s a fresh autumn for me, with you in it, so no more vanishing for fifty years, I’ll hang around in that chair for quite a few more years yet.”

“I know,” he whispered, “come on, babe, there are things to be shared and it’s bed time.”

“We had a bed time a long time ago,” remembered Stella, “and if you hadn’t done what you did to me…”

“Not to you, but with you,” interrupted Percy,

“Alright, with me, if we hadn’t done what we did then there would be no Peter, no twins at college, not his twins anyway…”

“You’d have found another lover,” said Percy, “you were always the most desirable girl. Before we got together for that year or so, before we made plans of seeing the world, plans that never came to fruition because I’m a foolish little man, my mates would whistle at you and whenever they talked of girls your name would be in the mix as one of the corkers!”

“One of the what?” smiled Stella.

“Corkers? What an odd word to use. We did back then, though, us mindless lads. Cor, what a corker, someone would say, and someone else would say I get turned on when I think what I could be doing to her...You don’t know and I can’t remember, but maybe it was me using those very words as I walked jauntily down the road with half a dozen others, watching you walking along in front of us.”

“Now don’t spoil my autumn!” laughed Stella, “and if you play your cards right and promise me another holiday like the one we’ve just had I might, just might, let you try an encore of what you seem to remember so fondly. But there’ll be no unexpected sons coming from it. I’m way past that!”

“Another holiday?” grinned Percy. “We talked about travelling back then. Remember?”

“But never to somewhere as far flung as Lascaux and its caves!” laughed Stella.

“But those were different days. With different expectations, closer horizons, however you want to put it. Only those with money went abroad in those days.”

“Our skyscape was certainly smaller back then,” she agreed.

“So let’s live in today. I noticed something in the brochure from Jimsons. How does Austria sound to you?”

“Austria? Isn’t that a long way away?”

“Only a bus ride,” grinned Percy, “and I’ve already bought the tickets.”

THE END

© Peter Rogerson 26.07.23